Metamorphosism

My uncle Phil died on Saturday. He was 86. I don’t want to write a long, emotional thing here, but I don’t know.

My brother sent me this picture. I was kind of numb until I saw this, then I cried so hard the cat got worried.

Listen, I was trying to remember my first memory of Phil, and it turns out to be my first memory at all. I was maybe two. He was carrying me on his back, down the path between his filbert orchard and his garden. A row of blackberries was on the left, the filbert trees on the right. Do you know the smell of filbert trees?

Beyond the row of berries was his large vegetable garden. The path led from his barn and chicken house between his junk pile and his wood pile, past his garage and tool shed, to his house. On the right are the fields where he had cows and my dad would later have horses sometimes.

Phil is carrying me, and I say, “Phil, you’re a pill.”

The rhyme interested me. And kidding with Phil.

There are a lot of things here. They are central to me, and they all come from my uncle. Everything I am, or very very much of it, is thanks to uncle Phil.

And this one image, this one memory says so much about him.

He was always carrying someone in one way or another. He lived to help other people. He was never rich and never had money, but he always had a twenty for you when you were broke, there was always cash in his birthday cards, or a check. He never had money but he made the world an abundant place and then he shared that abundance with everyone.

He helped my folks a lot. He helped all the relatives, he helped old people, he baby sat nieces and nephews. When I was in college I worked with him recycling metals and paper, and washing windows, and he shared the proceeds with me way more generously than he ought to have.

He financed my first trip to Europe by selling government bonds. I worked after school jobs and summer jobs to pay him back. He financed my second trip to Europe. I paid him back for that, too. Never once did he mention it or ask me to repay him.

And he was this way with everyone.

Always a twenty. Always a box of tomatoes from his garden. Always some eggs from the chicken house.

He took us camping, and his pack was always the heaviest, despite the rocks he hid in your pack as a practical joke.

Dinners were fun times. If you looked away, he stole your food.

I won’t go on and on here,  although I could.

He took pictures. It was like having Diane Arbus in the family. He took many thousands of pictures since the 1940s. Always the camera. Always posing us. Or taking candid shots. We were often, Oh, Phil, not another picture. But, now we have dozens and dozens of albums, dating back to the 1940s. It’s a precious thing.

Little did we know.

And funny thing, he liked word play, especially spoonerisms, and I like words too. I have a garden. I like practical jokes. And it’s not only me. My brother has a garden and chickens. If you go to his house, he will give you vegetables. He takes care of old people. And my sister is that way too. And my cousins. Phil was central to all of us. We all want to go to Hawaii again. He got us started with that. We all like to travel. If you look away, we will all steal your food.

So, Phil. Abundant and funny, practical jokes and generous. I am not monkey man strong, though. Things have their limits. He was not a big guy, average size about, but he would come home from the mountains with a truckload of waste wood he had salvaged from some logging operation, to burn, and dude - there were logs in there that filled the bed of his truck. How did you get those in there, we would ask him. I just put them in, he would say.

And he had an arm. He liked ball sports. He was athletic. I’m none of these things. I remember him one time, he was up on a ladder picking pears. I was bugging him about something. Then I ran away. I got clear across the field. I thought I was home free. How far away was I? It felt like miles. I was running and laughing when a rotten pear hit me right in the lower back so hard that half the pear went up my shirt, clear to my shoulder blades, and the other half filled the crack of my ass. It was the most perfect rotten pear shot known to science.

I started crying, I was so shocked. It shouldn’t have been possible! No one can throw a rotten pear that far!

I don’t know how old I was. Forty? Or nine, maybe? Something like that.

So, Phil. I could go on and on. We were driving down the street once, and a guy on the sidewalk spazzed out and fell down. Phil stopped the car, ran over and helped him. Would you have? At the time, I would have just ignored it. But he got the guy into the shade, found out what was wrong with him, got help.

I think the guy was drunk. I think it turned out he was drunk, but I also think I’m making that up, or made it up then. He may have had a seizure, it was a hot day. I don’t know. It was just a weird, scary guy, and Phil didn’t even think, he ran over and helped him.

I could go on and on.

On and on.

That’s the last time I let D talk me into visiting a pulque joint in Puebla.

What year is it?

Stop me if you’ve seen this.

Requires Flash.

Waiting at a light this morning, the air clear, the city grey, marveling at how European everything looked, hoping nothing would bounce out of the dumpster on the back of the truck in front of me when it took off, I checked out this woman walking past on the sidewalk. Not for long; at the moment my attention briefly focused on her, she leaned over and blew her nose farmer-style, shook some off her hand, and continued on her way.

Last night, I tried to sell Gamma a de-lousing as a beauty treatment. It’s times like that when I wish I could wave my hand and make my children gullible and naive for the duration of a bath, you know? But, alas. Much screaming. Much, much screaming, in fact. Wow, in fact. We washed with the louse shampoo: shut your eyes, no, yes, hold the washcloth over them, no, yes, what’d I tell you, I warned you. We rinsed with vineger. No vinegar, yes vinegar, it loosens the nits and they de-stick and come out, no, yes, no, I’m not a salad, then quit acting like a salad, no, yes. I then shampooed with baby shampoo to sort of neutralize the aromatic goings on. Washed the brush as well as possible, brushed, went through everything with a fine-toothed comb, no, yes, hang on just a second almost done, no, yes, we’ll give you a cool hairdo, okay.

Had to repeat the hairdo, and improve upon it, at breakfast time this morning. You look cool, let me see, let me go look in the mirror, gah finish your toast I don’t want toast what do you want I want a Kaiser roll with smoked salmon okay here you are now finish that and brush your teeth we’re running late.

Her sister examined the hairdo. K3wL, futuristic, she said.

All your friends in Kindergarten will be envious, I said. She decided then that she didn’t want to wear glasses, to avoid minimizing the overall beauty package. Your glasses are great, I said. All the kids will want glasses. No, yes, look, see, you look fantastic with the glasses, okay I guess so, whew.

Now my scalp itches again.

“Honey, wake up. There’s some guy here to see you, something with G.”
“What?”
“Just get up. He’s waiting in the kitchen.”
“Gah.”
[goes to kitchen]

(more…)

Where’s the expression “cockeyed” come from?

It just occurred to me that the proper spelling is not “knitwit”. Doh.

Are lice a taboo topic where you come from? I’d never given them, nor their influence on the language, much thought until forced to do so by recent events.

Nitwit, nitpick, etc.

Gamma’s Kindergarten lady just called and said they’d checked the kids for lice again, just to be sure and found no live ones on her, but did see a few nits in her hair and was it okay to spray her. Sure, I said, spray her. Who cares if it’s a neurotoxin, as long as it kills lice, man.

Agenda for tonight: bathe Gamma, wash her hair with special shampoo, give a special beauty rinse with vinegar to dislodge any remaining nits, find the fine-toothed nit comb and somehow convince this long- and tangle-haired girl to let me apply it.

“What’s wrong?”
[Shakes sleepy head.]
“Honey?”
“Wah, the gas went out of my balloon over night.”
“Oh, you poor thing.” [Big hug. Wipe tears from her cheek. She got a helium balloon at the Protestant costume party yesterday.] “Eat your cereal. Or would you like toast?”
[Shakes head again.]
“Maybe we should take a look at your balloon.”
[Nods.]
“You know, this is a common phenomenon with helium balloons. They’re a little porous and the gas leaks out overnight. Let’s try cutting off the string and see if that helps.”
[Skeptical look.]
[Child and big sister watch dad cut string, release balloon, which sinks oh-so-slowly to floor.]
“Well, that’s a little better, heh. Let me try one more thing.” [Rubs balloon on shirt, sticks it to wall.]
“Yay!” [She tries sticking balloon to various places on wall.]
“Whew.”
[Big sister goes back to brushing her hair.]

Later, saw Teddy-Bear Guy in traffic again. He’s about 35, sandy hair, rides in the back seat of a beige compact car driven by a woman in her 50s. He looks straight ahead and holds a medium-sized teddy bear to his lips. There is a “handicapped” decal adhered to the rear window of the car.

I wonder if the tortoise is still hibernating. She’s in a box in the cellar. I should check on her.

Alpha’s only been away on business single day so far, and already I nearly brushed my teeth with hair gel this morning. The kids and I surprised ourselves by being ready to go an entire minute early this morning, but then I noticed one cat wanted in (it was quite frosty this morning) so I got back out of the car and let him in, then noticed that we had forgotten a bunch of stuff - Gamma’s glasses, her car seat, her princess fairy costume. Thank cat God.

Have I said I played cello with other real, live adults last night? I am so happy about that…